


Like Thieves in the Night

by Edonohana



Category: Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Cat Burglars, F/F, Makeover, Tokyo (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-15 04:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: Girls just want to have fun.





	Like Thieves in the Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheliak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheliak/gifts).

It was past midnight, but Ororo couldn’t rest, even on the comfortable futon in Lady Mariko’s home. All was well. The villains were all dead or fled. Rogue was out of the hospital. Logan had recovered, Lady Mariko was safe, and their wedding would proceed as planned. So why did she feel so unsettled?

She slipped outside and paced around the gardens, but not even the night air with its scent of mist could bring peace to her troubled heart.

_Perhaps it is not peace I seek,_ she thought. 

Once the idea had come to her, she knew it for the truth. She wondered if she had become so addicted to danger that she hoped to be attacked. But when she imagined some rogue mutant or evil alien or army of ninjas leaping out of the shadows, she felt no delicious thrill, but only a mild exasperation. She didn’t want to fight, she just wanted to feel her heart beat and her pulse race. She wanted to spin, to dance, to laugh. Above all, she wanted to feel free.

She knew who would understand. And Yukio certainly wouldn’t mind a surprise visit late at night. She'd looked distinctly hopeful when she'd pointed out a neighborhood with the remark, “Fly overhead while the moon is up if you want a little excitement.”

Ororo summoned the wind. The cool air lifted her. As she flew away, her cape spread out like wings, the rolling green of Lady Mariko’s estate and its jasmine-scented air and its quiet gave way to skyscrapers and neon lights, the smells of exhaust fumes and roast meat, and music, electronic sounds, talking, and trains. It was almost overwhelming. The wind blew faster, stronger, almost tumbling her through the sky. 

_I should control my emotions_, she thought. 

But she didn’t want to. And for once, she let herself give in to desire rather than discipline. She let the wind blow her about, her long hair whipping about her face, her cape tangling around her arms, trusting that it wouldn’t let her fall. Her wild spin was checked when she saw a black-clad figure standing on one leg on the peak of a rooftop, waving wildly at her.

Ororo plunged down, landing not with her usual light-as-a-feather soundless touch but with a hard clack of her heels on the tiles. The wind that brought her down buffeted Yukio as well, but she turned it into a spin, arms and legs flung out, her foot pointed as precisely as a ballerina’s. Then the wind died, and the two women were left standing on the roof.

“Welcome, Storm!” Yukio cried, then laughed. “If I needed the wind to travel, I wouldn’t keep my hair so long.”

Ororo pushed her tangled hair out of her face. “That is what the tiara is for.”

“Hmm.” Yukio touched the tiara, smiling. Her own black hair was too short to be disturbed by the wind, and her clothes clung to her athletic body with nary a wrinkle. She was like a knife blade, all sharp edges and danger. “Well, if any long white hairs get left behind, it won’t matter: no one would ever suspect you, and everyone knows mine are black.”

“I am not in the habit of shedding,” Ororo said with dignity. Then she added, “What do you mean, suspect?”

“As the daring cat burglar who crept into a certain wealthy CEO’s well-guarded bedroom, and stole the diamond necklace he intended to give to his mistress.” Yukio seized her hand. “Come along. I’ve already disabled the security system.”

Ororo resisted the tug. “I have not been a thief for many years.”

Blithely, Yukio said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure you haven’t lost your touch.”

And before Ororo could argue, Yukio threw herself off the roof, pulling Ororo with her. Ororo arrested their fall, cushioning them both with the wind. Yukio, unfazed, pointed with her other hand. “See? That window, there. Fly us to it, wind-rider! Unless you’d prefer to climb.”

Wisdom, morality, and habit told Ororo to drop Yukio back on the roof, then leave. But she had not come here out of wisdom or habit, and she’d known of Yukio’s less-than-stringent morality already. Besides, she despised infidelity. And a wealthy CEO who could afford to buy his mistress a diamond necklace could afford to lose it. And...

Yukio poked her in the chest. “Stop trying to argue yourself out of it. Or into it. You make all the decisions in the day; tonight, let me make a few for you.”

“Says the woman who dances with death.”

“Yes.” Yukio glanced down. Ororo followed her gaze. There was nothing beneath their feet, nothing but air and her power and her will. But Yukio was unafraid. Suspended in mid-air, she gave a formal bow. It was, Ororo realized with amusement, not a Japanese-style bow but a western one; Yukio also doffed an imaginary hat. “Dance with me tonight, storm-caller.”

Ororo once again gave in to the desire of her heart. She offered her hand as if accepting an invitation at a formal dance. “With pleasure.” 

She flew them to the window and kept them hovering there while Yukio silently opened it, then vaulted inside. She landed lightly as a cat, then beckoned to Ororo, who bundled her cape together and followed. Like Yukio had said, all the ways of thievery came back to her at once: the soft step, the senses sharpening to catch the first sign of trouble, the thrill of danger, the confidence in her own abilities. 

The CEO lay snoring in a western-style bed, a pale lump of sheets in the dark room. Yukio’s clothes blended into the shadows; her head and hands seemed to float, disembodied, as she gentured to Ororo to keep watch while she dealt with the safe. 

A tumbler clicked loudly as the safe unlocked. A jolt of adrenaline went through Ororo as the sleeping man stopped snoring and stirred, his hand reaching out. On silent feet, Ororo stepped neatly out of his line of sight and moved the water glass closer to his hand. His fumbling fingers touched it. Still mostly asleep, he took a gulp, then turned over in bed. The rumble of his snoring returned.

Yukio gave Ororo a wink, then gestured for her to come over and look inside the safe. The diamond necklace was a delicate, glittering confection fit for a princess, resting atop stacks and stacks of bills. Yukio lifted it with a touch as sure as Ororo’s had once been with wealthy men’s wallets, and tucked it away in her pocket. Leaving the money alone, she softly closed and re-locked the safe. 

Yukio strode to the window and, without a backward glance, leaped out. Ororo’s heart jolted, but she managed to catch Yukio with a gust of wind before she fallen more than a few feet. Ororo hovered to close the window before she brought them both back to the safety of the roof where they’d met.

“Well?” Yukio inquired.

“It _was_ fun,” Ororo admitted. “I am almost sorry it is over.”

“Over?” Yukio shook her head. “Oh, no, Storm. The night has just begun!”

With those words, Ororo felt a greater excitement than she had during the theft itself. Wind swirled around her, lifting her hair. “Lead on.”

She followed Yukio as she bounded across the rooftops, matching her leaps with the power of her muscles alone, not using the wind. Yukio stopped on a flat roof overlooking some private garden on one side and train tracks on the other. She touched the high collar of Ororo’s costume. “It’s like a fortress wall. I’d meant to give you the necklace, but there’s nowhere for it hang.”

“It would not suit me anyway.”

“I didn’t know what it would look like—I only knew what it was worth. But you’re right. It’s pretty. You’re not pretty.”

“No?”

“Not at all.” Yukio touched Ororo’s jawline, tilting her head. Her finger felt as hot as the sun, and as life-giving. “You’re beautiful. Magnificent. Fierce. Would you call lightning ‘pretty?’”

Her throat seemed to have closed up. Ororo shook her head. Then, her fingers shaking a little, she unclasped her cape and set it aside, leaving her throat bare. Yukio watched her with the patient intensity of a thief, then leaned forward and touched her lips to the hollow of Ororo’s throat.

It was like the first time she’d called down a storm. Like her fingers slipping into a pocket. Like flying. Like freedom. And it was like nothing but itself, like Yukio’s hard bones and clever fingers, her hot mouth and lithe body and her wildness. Lightning flashed overhead and thunder boomed as Ororo abandoned all control to the joy of the moment.

Afterward, she was roused by Yukio’s laughter. 

“Does this always happen?” Yukio asked.

There had apparently been a downpour all around them which had spared only the roof where they lay. Ororo was torn between amusement and embarassment. “It does not.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment.” Yukio’s fingers, which could throw a knife or crack a safe, were gentle as they pushed up her white hair. “You have an exquisite skull.”

And that was the delight and price of being with Yukio: the weird, the sudden, the utterly unexpected. “What?”

“You do. It’s like a sculpture I’d steal from a museum. It’s a shame to hide it with all that hair.”

“You think I should _shave my head_?” 

Teasingly, Yukio said, “Perhaps only a portion of it.”

Ororo thought of the people she’d seen in Tokyo—not the ninjas, not the samurai, not Lady Mariko in her formal kimonos or the businessmen in their suits, but the teenagers and artists and singers in their studs-and-leather punk clothes and flashy punk haircuts. 

“I believe I will,” she replied. “Also, I brought with me a sleeveless black leather vest which I won in a duel…”

Yukio’s face nearly cracked, she was grinning so widely. “Naturally you did.”

“…and I would like to buy some clothes I can wear with it. I expect you know where to take me.”

Yukio was already scrambling back into her own clothes. “Of course I do.”

Ororo dressed, then once again said, “Lead on.”

They shopped for clothes in Harajuku, along with what felt like the entire teenage and punk population in Tokyo. Afterward they rode a train—not inside, atop the roof—to the secret salon of Tokyo’s most famous hair stylist, who cut the hair of rock stars, and whom Yukio bribed with the diamond necklace to come to work in the middle of the night.

Ororo stepped away from the pile of white hair on the floor and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. With her hair cut into a flowing white Mohawk, she could see the shape of her skull. Her tight shirt and her black leather pants and boots and gloves gave her a completely different silhouette. She stood tall and straight, a woman and a warrior, both disciplined and free.

She was the woman who had picked pockets in the streets and had been worshipped as a goddess, who rode the wind and called down the storm, who had seen the vastness of space and stabbed another woman in the heart. She was the woman who had made love with Yukio while lightning split the sky above them. And now, at last, others could see the woman she truly was.

The woman Yukio had seen all along.

“Glorious,” said Yukio, then winked. “Now you’re _really_ ready to have some fun!”

It was a night which at once felt as if it lasted forever, and which went by in a flash. They danced in a club, flew through the skies, and squeezed onto a wooden bench at a food stall, where they drank beer and ate skewered chicken and lotus root and ginkgo nuts with a rowdy bunch of construction workers. 

When dawn began to brighten the sky, they returned to the roof where it had all begun. 

“I must go,” Ororo said with regret. “I have a wedding to attend.”

“Going to get back in your old clothes?” 

Ororo shook her head. “My team should see me as I am.”

Yukio pressed a final, hasty, heated kiss against her lips. Ororo felt the familiar shift of movement that she knew from her days as a pickpocket, but made no attempt to stop Yukio’s hand. A sudden, sharp twinge pricked her scalp, and then Yukio was laughing and brandishing her prize: a fine strand of white hair. 

“Am I so fine a thief that you didn’t feel me reaching?” Yukio asked. 

“Certainly not,” replied Ororo. “I was curious to see what you intended to steal.”

_Other than my heart,_ she thought.

Yukio smiled, and Ororo knew that though neither of them were telepaths, they shared the same thought. And they knew it.

“Come visit me the next time you’re here,” said Yukio. “Fly against the moon, and look for me on the rooftops!” 

She spun about, balanced on one foot, and sprang across a gap wide enough to make Ororo gasp. But she landed on the next roof over with room to spare, blew a kiss over her shoulder, and vanished over the side. 

_I should have stolen my own memento of her,_ Ororo thought. But she had her memories, as vivid as the woman herself; she needed no token.

When she summoned the wind, something tapped against her waist. She looked down, and found that a studded leather collar had been clipped around one of her belts. She laughed and fastened it around her neck. It fit perfectly.

“I know you are watching,” she called out. “You would not miss seeing me wear it!”

The wind carried to her the steel-bright ring of Yukio’s laughter.


End file.
